The choice of AMD or NVIDIA graphics is constantly becoming a difficult choice for enthusiasts thanks to an almost level playing field as a result of strong competition between AMD and NVIDIA.

Both brands ave their pros and cons but offer a very similar experience. Choice has become a more personal one, often of brand loyalty than technical.

Add in board partners are constantly releasing custom design graphics cards which squeeze every bit of performance and cooling for both brands equally.

HAWK - MSI's second highest model line (there is Gaming, Hawk and Lightning) offers strong overclocking and tweaking without being too intimidating to the enthusiast who isn't into modding or custom cooling. Their latest version is no exception.

In our fly-off, we were quite impressed with the speed and handling of both the AMD Radeon R9 270X and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760 based MSI HAWK cards.

Out of the two cards, neither was the outright winner. The winner, however is the consumer. Read on to find out why.

Overview

These cards cater for a more enthusiast audience who are familiar with tweaking their graphics card's clock speeds and voltages It would be fair to call both cards reviewed here heavy duty high performance parts. Both offer full voltage adjustments which are not available on reference cards.

Name

N760 Hawk

R9 270X HAWK

GPU

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760

AMD Radeon R9 270X

Codename

GK104

Curacao XT

Processors

1152

1280

GPU Base Clock

1111 MHz

1100 MHz

GPU Boost Clock

1176 MHz

1150 MHz

Memory Clock

6008 MHz

5600 MHz

Memory Size

2048 MB GDDR5

2048 MB GDDR5

Memory Bus

256 bits

256 bits

Output

DisplayPort / HDMI / DL-DVI-D / DL-DVI-I

DisplayPort / HDMI / DL-DVI-D / DL-DVI-I

Power Consumption

170 W

161 W

Card Dimension

264x130x40 mm

263x136x38 mm

Form Factor

ATX

ATX

DirectX

11.0

11.2

OpenGL

4.3

4.3

Multi-GPU Technology

3 Way SLI

AMD CrossFire technology

Multi-Display Technology

3-Way Surround

AMD Eyefinity technology

3D Technology

3D Vision

AMD HD3D technology

Power Saving Technology

Y

AMD ZeroCore Power technology
AMD PowerTune technology

HDCP Capable

Y

Y

GPGPU technology

CUDA/PhsyX

OpenCL/AMD APP Acceleration

Power Supply

500W

500W with 12 volt at 30 amps

While the cards themselves are fascinating, the actual retail bundle leaves much to be desired. The usual 'throw-away' driver/application/norton anti virus CD, a generic quick start guide and DVI-VGA adapter are bundled.

It would have been beneficial to the enthusiast target buyer to include some extra adapters or cables as ASrock and Sapphire do.

As far as software goes, to utilise the full voltage adjustment features of the HAWK, Afterburner beta 17 is required which was made available after the cards release.